There is one immovable, immutable, indelible trait that all natural born writers share. In times of deep stress or incredible joy, we write in our heads. Despite the entire world collapsing a writer cannot help but observe details that will make the story live on.

Natural born writers catalog sensory data. They store details and emotional reactions and poignant bits of dialogue as events unfold around them. This requires no conscious effort on the writer’s part. It just happens. No matter how nightmarish the experience, no matter how spiritually elevating, how tender, or loving, or awe-inspiring, no matter how devastating or painful – a writer records story details.

You, who are writers, think back to an early memory. Delve for an experience when you were five or six years of age. It’s all there, isn’t it? Remember climbing onto Santa’s lap. I stared at that fat stranger in red, and wondered why my mother had been so insistent that Santa Claus is real when clearly his beard is fake. One good pull and…

Now, try recalling a traumatic event. I’ll use my mother dying in the hospital as an example. I was thirteen. I can still remember sitting beside her bed, and noticing how blue her veins were as they pulsed in her too thin wrists. I remember the cloying smell of medicinal sweat permeating the hospital and the biting stench of ammonia used to mop the tile floors. And meatloaf. Why is it hospitals must always stink of meatloaf and medicine?

My mother’s eyes were as faded as the afternoon sky as she turned to me on that last day, both of us knowing she would not be there for my first kiss or my first broken heart. She was so desperate to say all the things a mother ought to tell her daughter. What last words, I wondered, would she find amidst the fog of pain and drugs?

Speech battled with the morphine.
Morphine won.
It clouded her eyes and rendered her sightless. My mother reached for me, scrabbling for my hand like a frightened child, terrified of the tigers that inhabited the pale yellow wall across from her bed.

Do you see how, at thirteen, that scene etched itself in my head. Because of that experience, and others, I know how to write a death scene.

Stress is not your enemy. If you are a natural born writer every trauma is being recorded for future use. Every major event in your life is subject to the scrutiny of your writer’s mind scouring it for story riches.

Here’s the flip side of this coin. Here comes the golden nugget of this article, because if you are a writer you already knew everything I just said, didn’t you?

The real payoff is this: when you are facing painful stressors in life, death, suffering, divorce, illness – WRITE. You are writing anyway – in your head. Snatch fifteen minutes between meeting with your lawyer or the funeral director and write. Or even if you simply can’t do that, know you are writing in your head. It keeps writers sane amidst insanity. It’s how natural born writers make sense of their world.

The worst thing that could happen to a writer is too placid an existence. The richest material, the most gratifying lines you will ever write are born from your deepest traumas and your most extraordinary joys.

12 Comments

My life took an entirely different turn. For me, very-early childhood sexual abuse robbed me of my memory completely, leaving me nearly numb emotionally until I was in my 40s. Writing poetry in high school was perhaps my first attempt at writing and was more an expression of repressed emotion than actual experience. Like the feelings had been recorded and were desperate to escape. Writing songs makes poetry writing an exercise in precision and a challenge to achieve excellence with words.

For me, to write takes conscious effort, permission, if you will, for my psyche to express itself and take flight. It’s WORK! Hard work. And I like to write non-fiction better than fiction. A fictional story appearing in my mind is a shock!

Reading is escape for me. It refreshes and destresses me. How cool that I can write off the time and expense! I read a lot, more when I’m stressed, though it’s tough to carve out the time sometimes when I need it the most.

I write perhaps because I’m always trying to improve things–I’ve got a critical spirit, I guess. I like to find a better way to do things, so I think I’m a better editor than a writer. But, I’m also a teacher and I love helping people understand difficult concepts and ideas. And I love being able to influence others with the incredible power of words. A natural-born writer? I don’t think that hat fits me very well.

That had to be so incredibly difficult, for you, Susan. It grieves me. Things like that should never happen to children.

Yet, it was through your writing poetry that you began to express and reconnect with your emotions.

And music – I often wonder about the connection between music and the psyche. Music is so intensely emotional and yet it frees us from direct confrontation with words (labeling the emotions). It plays straight to our emotions and yet is also amazingly mathematical.
A whole ‘nuther topic which you and I will have to discuss over lunch someday.

Wow, Kat! It really makes you stop and think about how we as writers do tend to compartmentalize and categorize everything in our brains without realizing it, to access later in life when those things are needed. We use our senses to bring a depth of reality to our stories, playing with the sights, sounds, and emotions to make every single sentence as real as possible.

I have to admit, many a moment in my stories has somehow been adapted from a true life situation. Whether mine or someone I know – the memory is locked inside and slips out at unexpected moments when penning a story.

I first noticed this when describing the stepmother in my first book. She had this plastic smile at all times, I could only think to describe it as appearing to have been surgically applied. With every word I pictured my Uncles second, and younger, wife sitting across the room from my mother and me. Legs crossed, grin in place, even when she spoke- LOL – every flick of her sandal was described from memory-

I guess that puts me in the camp that natural born writers draw from every situation around them, present and past, and perhaps even the aniticipation of the future.

Is that enough to be crowned, natural born writer, I don’t know. But certainly something worth considering.

I guess I’m still in the camp that considers the ability to instinctively string two interesting sentences together a basic requirement to be considered a natural born author.

See. That’s the skill I think is so vital to writing – you remembered such rich details. That, like you were saying at the party, can’t be taught. I think skills can be learned but this penchant for seeing the unique details is an essential trait.

Hi, Kathleen: I usually close my eyes and picture the scene. What is in the room? How to the characters move? I will embody a character and really feel how she feels and thinks. Sounds weird, I know, but that is what works for me.

I never thought about how I write in my head, but you’re so right. As far back as I can remember I would play things in my mind, and when someone said something, I’d add “He said, annoyed” or whatever was appropriate.

Wow, Kat! Cool blog, and you’re so right! I always think I have the worst memory in the world, but when I think about times that were extremely difficult, or delightful and joyous, it’s like I go back in time and I’m right there. I can’t wait to ask Ethan if this is true for him, too.

G’day Kathleen from a new Down Under fan! No, I’m not a writer; my poetic aspirations peaked & died a natural death in adolescence – fired initially, I suspect, from too brief a period of blissful oblivion, and subsequent growing pains which gave me an overblown view of my ability. Your blog re ” Natural born Writer” however resonated with me. Your comments regarding storing each new life event & experience away for future use made me smile. I always tend to feel a fraud within my own experiences, wondering if I’m reacting appropriately or sufficiently at the time, be it joy or grief. Is it embarrassment at my own reaction? Is it the desire to do what is socially acceptable behaviour that distracts me, as part of my brain is always outside the experience, analysing it, almost re-writing it for future dissection and re-telling. Am I emotionally inept, that I cannot always give in totally and be overwhelmed by the moment, and only analyse it at a later time? Thankyou for the reassurance that I’m not as fake or callous as my self criticism would have me believe in dark moments.
I’m a closet digester of romantic fiction and having just completed “Mistaken Kiss” I must thank you for chapter 18 – it was so refreshing to see a Regency H & H in so beautiful accord well before their H.E.A. on the last page. As you might say: “I was in alt”. As another “Aggie”, I like to believe if I’d been alive in the Regency England I’d be as my namesake – a nurse or Abigail, not a romantic Deb. of the Ton, or a bluestocking Cit 🙂 Cheers, Gaye

Hi Gaye!
I’m so sorry I didn’t see your note sooner. I’m not so good about keeping up with my website when I’m on deadline.

It’s interesting that you had writer tendencies but they got lost in the fray.
There’s nothing wrong with you – you are simply observing. We all react to emotions differently. But I sense that you may have had some deep scars in your early years. Your ability to observe, like a writer does, is a trait that allows us room to grow and learn from the difficulties we have encountered.

I wonder if you were to just jot some poetic/or poignant lines about some of the observances you make – what might that stimulate in you? Be brave. Give it a try.

God bless you and thank you for your kind words about Mistaken Kiss.
Light and Love,
-Kathleen